


Stardate 47235.1, 0100 hours

by larvae



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Declarations Of Love, Dialogue Heavy, Drabble, First Kiss, M/M, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:29:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27131173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/larvae/pseuds/larvae
Summary: Odo and Quark chat at the bar after hours.
Relationships: Odo/Quark (Star Trek)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 43





	Stardate 47235.1, 0100 hours

Quark’s was not the only eatery on DS9’s Promenade with a liquor license, but it was the only formal bar, with the only Holosuites, the only Dabo tables, and the only Federation certified currency exchange stations. So it stayed open late. Much later than would have been optimum for keeping the peace, if you were to ask the Chief of Security.

Tonight, thirty minutes past its closing, the bar hosted two tenants. They sat, as they made a habit of sitting almost every night, at the end of the bar furthest from the now-gated door. The Ferengi, Quark, the bar’s namesake and proprietor, poured over six slim, single screen PADDs laid out on the counter in front of him, comparing their blinking displays with those of the Bajoran PADD he held in his hands. He grumbled at odd intervals, baring his teeth at the numbers that scrolled past.

The Changeling, Odo, Chief of Station Security, sat across from him on a bar stool, scrolling through daily logs on his repurposed Cardassian PADD, blinking every so often to adjust to the Federation operating system..

Forty minutes into their mutual silence, Quark looked up from his three sets of ledgers spread over seven screens and turned to his companion. He huffed. Odo scrolled quietly.

Quark threw his tablet down and crossed his arms. Odo looked up.

“Ye - eee -es, Quark?” said Odo, dragging out the vowel the way he usually did when he was irritated (which was most of the time).

“We have a problem,” said Quark, setting his jaw.

“Hm, Nausicans overextending their credit lines again?”

“When are they not? But no. No, Odo, _we_ have a problem. You and me.”

“And what could that be?”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know, of course you know.”

“Quark, I’m really not in the mood for this,” said Odo, turning back to his briefings.

“You really don’t know, do you?” Odo watched him press the tip of his tongue against the back of his teeth in irritation, “Well, I don’t know if that’s better or worse.”

Quark drummed his fingers against the bar for a moment, shaking his head in resignation.

“I love you, Odo,” he said, the word worming its way between his sharp, uneven teeth like a wayward tube grub.

“I’m in love with you,” he continued, practically seething.

Odo blinked at him.

“...acknowledged,” he said finally, before turning back to the green and orange activity logs that had been idling on his screen.

“Acknowledged?” Quark balked, “Ackn- Oh he _acknowledges_ \-- Odo! What the hell are we gonna do about this!!”

“This?” said Odo, who would have raised his eyebrows if he’d had any.

“This!” said Quark, throwing up his arms, “I just told you I was in love with you!”

“And I acknowledged it.”

“Odo,” Quark huffed, “I had hoped you would appreciate how inconvenient this is for me. I mean… in love with the Chief of Security? It’s crippled my profit margins. The only thing I have left is the bar! Why, I don’t know a single reliable source of Stakoron brandy. I used to get a shipment a week!!”

“Yes,” said Odo, propping his elbow on the bar to rest his chin in his hand, “in Cargo Bay 16 under the tharul live cargo, to mask the smell.”

Quark furrowed his brows.

“You knew about that?”

“Of course I knew about that, Quark, it’s my job.”

“Well then why didn’t you stop me?? You knew about the Federation embargo, I know you did. You wrote the station vendor memo enforcing it!”

Odo scoffed, rolling his eyes with so much force it required him to turn his head.

“Your last shipment came before the quarterly audit,” he said. Then, watching Quark’s incredibly blank expression remain so, he continued, “It’s an in person inspection. Your shipments were small enough not to offset the weight logs past the acceptable margin of error, and I knew there wouldn’t be physical evidence at the time of review.”

“What so you just… let me get away with it? You knew the whole time?”

“You’re not a very good smuggler, Quark, and you cut costs by hiring couriers even worse at it than you are.”

“Then why let me do it?” Quark said defiantly, “I spent two years working with those couriers, that’s a hundred and four shipments.”

“Because I love you, Quark,” said Odo, now slamming his own PADD against the counter, “and it greatly stretches my tolerance.”

Quark’s mouth dropped open and he straightened up from the bar, taken physically aback by the confession.

“You… what?”

“Oh, don’t act like you didn’t know it either, Quark, honestly, that’s...” Odo gestured over the bar between them, moving his hands in intersecting circles, “what this is.”

A moment passed filled only by the soft whir of the nearest replicator’s self-cleaning cycle.

“That’s what this is…” said Quark. It wasn’t exactly a question, but it had a tentative step.

“That’s… what this is,” said Odo, with a slow and deliberate nod.

“Well,” said Quark, straightening his lapels and squaring his shoulders, “what are we going to do about it?”

Odo scoffed.

“Quark, we don’t have to do anything about it we can just… leave it be.”

“Well I’m not satisfied with that.”

“Really? That’s news to me! Or would you prefer that I start noticing exactly how many clerical errors seem to cluster around the entry logs of Cargo Bays 9 and 7?”

“Kiss me,” said Quark, crossing his arms.

“I _beg_ your pardon…?”

“Kiss me, or I don’t believe you.”

“Quark --”

“I’m serious! You can’t tell me you’re in love with me and leave it at that.”

“And why not?!”

“Because it’s changed now! It’s different!”

“It shouldn’t be,” said Odo, the irritation in his voice verging on anger.

“But it is! You’ve said it, I’ve said it…” Quark looked off somewhat wistfully, shaking his head and raising his palms in expertly feigned innocence, “to name it is to break it.”

“Quark,” Odo growled, “I have no interest in solid relationship constraints or their intolerable attachments. You can get whatever you need from your prospective Dabo girl applicants and I would thank you to keep me well out of it.”

“I don’t need anything from you that I can get from my Dabo girls,” Quark said with a dismissive wave of his hand.

“And thank goodness for that.”

“But I _am_ a romantic,” Quark continued, brushing past Odo’s scoff, “and I have standards. And if I can’t expect to watch the ink dry on a Writ of Acquisition at any point in our future, then I want this.”

Odo stared. Intently.

Quark splayed his fingers and shrugged, “You can’t tell me you love me and go back to your criminal activity reports. I won’t allow it.”

Odo sighed and set his PADD down on the bar. Quark watched him as he stood from his bar stool, ready to watch him turn and to stare angrily at his back as he left.

But he did not turn. He leaned. He reached his arms out, pulled Quark close, and then, in some inexplicably sudden and unbalancing way that didn’t match the deliberate grace of his movements, he kissed him. Kissed the living daylights out of him. It was only some time later, as he felt his arms unwinding from Odo’s neck, that Quark could feel the ground beneath his feet again.

“There,” said Odo, sounding unbearably pleased with himself, “happy now?”

“Yes,” Quark squeaked.

“Good!” said Odo, picking his PADD up from the bar and tucking it under his arm.

“That wasn’t so awful,” he mused as he turned towards the door, “but don’t expect me to make a habit of it.”

“And Quark,” he said from the doorway, “don’t think this means I won’t notice the weight imbalance on your Dosi tulaberry export. Pay a Karemma ferryman to secure it properly this time or the freighter stays another overnight, and you foot the bill.”


End file.
